(Bloomberg) -- Federal prosecutors plan to offer a plea deal to an Alabama man accused of participating in the January hack of the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s X account and a fake social media post about authorization of the first-ever spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds.
“We will extend a plea,” assistant US attorney Kevin Rosenberg told US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson on Friday at a hearing in Washington federal court. “I have no idea if it will be accepted.”
Eric Council Jr., 25, pleaded not guilty at the hearing to conspiring to commit aggravated identity theft and access device fraud. Any cooperation by Council could help prosecutors go after the unnamed co-conspirators who were allegedly the brains behind the scheme, which included using stolen personal information of an SEC staffer to gain access to the agency’s account.
Council allegedly made a fake ID and duped a local phone store employee into helping him gain access to the victim’s phone. The co-conspirators who initially identified the victim and directed Council’s actions were then able to break through security measures on X, formerly Twitter, and ultimately post the fake tweet, prosecutors say.
The account was hacked just a day before analysts expected the SEC to announce approval of the first-ever spot market Bitcoin exchange traded products. The hacker took control of the agency’s official account and posted a message Jan. 9 that said the regulator had granted approval to a handful of companies’ applications to trade the products. The agency announced its approval the next day.
Approval of the ETFs followed a long legal fight between the SEC and the issuer of one of the funds. It was one of the most eagerly anticipated events ever in the digital-asset industry.
The case is US v. Council, 24-cr-457, US District Court, District of Columbia (Washington).
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